Going Xolo: Intel’s first x86 Medfield smartphone reviewed

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“Intel can’t make smartphones.”

That statement has summarized the opinion of any number of engineers and business analysts ever since Intel launched Atom back in 2008. The technically oriented have tended to emphasize the larger die and increased power consumption of the x86 instruction set, while business pundits have claimed Intel would fail by refusing to price its parts competitively and accept the lower margins that resulted.

Intel, meanwhile, went ahead and built a smartphone anyway. That device, the Xolo X900, is what we’re reviewing today. It won’t ship to North America — Intel partnered with Indian manufacturer Lava International to bring the product to that country — but this is no prototype or proof-of-concept vehicle.

The Lava Xolo (pronounced ZOH-low) X900 is a 3G (HSPA+) device with a 4-inch 1024×600 screen, 1GB of RAM, a 1.6GHz Atom Z2460 CPU, and an SGX540 GPU clocked at 400MHz. Total available storage is 16GB. It runs Gingerbread (Android 2.3.7) with an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich scheduled to drop later this year. The screen is Corning’s Gorilla Glass and the device itself weighs 127 grams, or about 10% less than the iPhone 4S.

The Xolo X900 sports both a front (1.3MP) and rear (8MP) camera, an LED flash, a dedicated camera button, and micro USB / micro HDMI ports. The rear camera is capable of recording in 1080p and supports 1080p H.264 Main Profile playback at 30 fps. The phone’s specs are solid all the way around; easily on par with other shipping Android products.

One of the things I like most about the Xolo is its rubberized back. The oleophobic coating on the iPhone 4/4S may keep nasty grease from building up, but it makes the phone notoriously difficult to hold. The Xolo has an oleophobic coating on the front half (where it matters), and a no-nonsense surface on the back.

Here is the X900 side-by-side with the iPhone 4S. The X900 is slightly larger than the iPhone 4S on all three dimensions, thanks in part to its larger screen. At 1024×600, the Xolo’s screen has a pixel density of about 297 PPI. That’s slightly below the iPhone 4S (330 PPI), but well within the range of what’s considered a “Retina Display.”

First impressions

I recently upgraded to an iPhone 4S after my iPhone 3G took an unfortunate tumble. Up until now, my regular smartphone usage was always with an Apple product. When the X900 showed up on my doorstep I swapped out my SIM card, shifted some music and videos over, and set out to use the Xolo the same way I use my iPhone 4S.

If it weren’t for the Intel logo on the back of the phone there would be no way to know that it’s powered by an x86 processor. Battery life is acceptable — it’s on par with the iPhone 4S, with the caveat that I’m personally not overly thrilled with the battery life of the 4S. (More on this later.) Responsiveness when browsing the web is excellent, as is video playback. The phone has no trouble with Main Profile H.264 video at 30 fps.

Audio quality is good, though the external speakers distort a bit at full volume. This was never actually a problem; the phone’s output is more than sufficient for listening to music or watching video without pushing the volume to 100%. There’s only one audio issue that irritated me, and it may very well be an Android/Gingerbread problem rather than an Intel one. The iPhone can play two distinct sounds at the same time. If you’re listening to music and receive a text message, the phone plays the text message notification (if you have one) without pausing the audio. The X900 doesn’t do this. When a text or IM comes in, it briefly locks out whatever you were listening to or watching at the time.

Game performance is the only area where the X900 sags compared to the iPhone 4S, and we knew that going in. Intel’s Atom Z2640 uses an integrated SGX540 GPU clocked at 400MHz. That’s significantly faster than the majority of SGX540 designs on the market today, but it’s still a single-core solution going up against one of the fastest gaming smartphones available today.

Dungeon Defenders is a bit much for the X900

The size of the gap between the two phones also depends on what sort of game you’re playing. Angry Birds Space, for example, plays perfectly smoothly on both. Dungeon Defenders — an Xbox Live game that debuted on tablets late last year — runs unacceptably slowly, even with all the detail levels turned to minimum. Casual/puzzle fans won’t have a problem.

Tagged In

It’s not. Size is comparable to a number of Android phones including the Skyrocket II.

Anonymous

imho most smartphone are too big, including the iPhones, imho the maimum phone size is about 10cm x 5cm ~ 4″ x 2″ (width x lenght, depth is not that important for me), but maybe this is only my personal opinion because bigger sizes don’t fit well into my pockets. And the Skyrocket is an exceptionally large phone, it is much larger than the iPhone, which has an avergae size for high-end smartphones imho.

Joel Hruska

10cm x 5cm seems an awful tight fit for a powerful modern smartphone. It’s not an accident that the more powerful phones tend to have larger screens — they need the space for battery storage and thermal dissipation — which makes it easy to have a large display, too.

Anonymous

Not everyone needs so much CPU power in a smartphone, so things like using a single-core CPU reduces power requirements and thermal problems. the electronics itself doesn’t need much space anymore, e.g. google for images iPhone 4S disassembly. Also making the phone a little thicker and reducing hight and width (and screen size) is a good option for many users because a few mm more depth normally makes less problems when you put your phone in a pocket than a few cm more width or length (e.g. a phone with 10cm x 5cm x 1.5 cm has the same volume as a phone with 12cm x 6.25 cm x 1 cm). And not everyone needs a screen with 3.5″ or more. And also battery life isn’t that important fopr everyone, because many people recharge their smartphones every day anyway and don’t use them that much, that the battery lasts less than a day.

Also I find it funny that a few years ago everyone wanted to have a small phone and now it seems that many people just want big screens and much processing power, but don’t care much about the size of the whole thing anymore.

I guess that both of these trends are hypes and that in a few years, it will be more balanced because people will have learned what they really need their phone for (I have a 3.2″ screen and imho this is enough for navigation, basic gaming and basic web browsing, only the resolution is a little small with 360×640, but you can make screens of that size with higher resolutions now, e.g. the Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray has a 3.3″ screen with 480×854).

Andrew Dodd

Why are you surprised the GNex and Skyrocket swapped places? The Snapdragon S3 (which is NOT a Cortex-A9, your article is wrong in this regard) is notorious for performing poorly for a given clock rate. A better choice for comparison would have been a Galaxy S II, not the Skyrocket, as the GSII DOES have a dual-core Cortex-A9.

Joel Hruska

Andrew,

Thanks for catching this. I’ll adjust the article accordingly. As for comparisons, one works with what one has to work with.

Anonymous

What is the Specific Absorbtion Rate of this phone?

Joel Hruska

Florinated,

It’s not given and it’s not important. The Interphone study — a 13 year research project across multiple nations — finds no evidence of a link between cell phone radiation and…well, anything.

Nevertheless, if you’re a tinfoil hatter, the usual statements apply: Get yourself some earbuds and pay megabucks for an expensive case to block those harmful rays.

Syke Phank

Talk time is very light on the CPU usage.

The very poor video playback battery life is more likely indicitive of the x86 power hungry nature.

Syke Phank

Talk time is very light on the CPU usage.

The very poor video playback battery life is more likely indicitive of the x86 power hungry nature.

Anonymous

With a few optimizations and a much better GPU this should be very competitive. Especially coupled with Windows 8 maybe even on a tablet. I wonder if they could do a dual core version of this with Ivy Bridge 4000 graphics on a Windows 8 tablet. That would be a setup that would make me want to buy my first tablet.

Joel Hruska

Action,

Intel has already announced a dual-core Atom variant that’ll arrive with Windows 8. The GPU, however, is probably an SGX544.

Anonymous

Do you think they could use their 4000 graphics on the Medfield, or are they incompatible?

Anonymous

I hope when Win 8 debuts on smarthphones, you can finally use normal Windows applications on x86 smartphones. Althogh there might be problems when using a touchscreen as a mouse replacement, as icons might be too small, especially as most modern touchscreens are of the capacitive type, so they connot be used with a stylus. But it would still be possible to run many Windows games which don’t need much CPU or GPU power directly on the smartphone instead of hoping that someone makes a good port and paying again for a game you already own on the PC. Of course it will probably not be possible to use a optical drive on a smratphone, but that can be replaced by a virtual CD drive on the phone and an image you made from your game on the PC.

Low battery life on video playback may be related to software, which may be using native ARM codes. Which leads Atom to emulate theese and causing elevated CPU usage. Did you also check cpu utilization during video playback?

Joel Hruska

Deferder,

Just checked this. Caveat applies: I can’t say for certain that an Android-specific app is going to track the Atom correctly. Intel did not provide a CPU monitor utility.

Usage *appears* to be in the 10-20% range for HD video decode. I have no data to compare against, but that would be within acceptable norms in other devices.

Mohammad Mujahid

Intel is smart enough to build smart processors, we have lot of brands for mobile phones to produce.

Does it support WhatsApp messenger? Pretty popular among the android users

Vishal Dhiman

it does… i am using it..

sagar

What about temple run after ics

Aquib Shaikh

Can we Install windows 8 on this device as it runs a x86 processor.If yes tell me how.

berock212

Everyone stop dicking around with stupid comments and lets get ask the real question everyone is wanting to know. Can you run Windows on this phone.

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